Posts by silks

HP bows to pressure, reinstates free monthly ink plan... for existing customers

HP LaserJet

For longevity the older HP LaserJets were legendary.

I remember working in my early IT days and even in a busy office the only faults seem to be when a used put rubbish quality paper and caused jams. Maybe the longevity is related to them having print engines made by Canon.

My own colour LaserJet must be around 15 years old now, only annoyance is when it decides to do it's automatic & noisy cleaning cycle at 2am!

Toner cartridges are expensive but last for thousands of pages and don't dry out like inkjet so cost effective in the long run.

Combined, that probably gets close to the 15 pages per month!

What's that lurking behind the borked face of finance? Windows, of course

XP Embedded

XP Embedded was used in a range of ATMs, probably quite a lot still out there.

Also seen at my local train station was BSOD on the massive / fancy graphics passenger information board! That's despite the old small "legacy" board hidden away in the corner with LED matrix and a 9600 baud serial connection working just fine.

UK comms regulator: Could we interest sir in a bespoke broadband speed estimate?

Re: Suits you, Sir

There's a joke in PING (Packet Inter-Net Groper) to be had there, possibly also the UNIX "Finger" command is a step too far...

Apple: Don't close MacBooks with a webcam cover on, you might damage the display

Post-It Note

A cut-out Post-It note is all that's required to block camera access, that should't break the display and costs almost nothing.

A paper clip, a spool of phone wire and a recalcitrant RS-232 line: Going MacGyver in the wonderful world of hotel IT

Re: Proper lash up

This is a local shop for local people, there's nothing for your here!

Re: Proper lash up

Hate it when things are named "new" as the name dates quite quickly.

Portakabins in Schools were "temporary" also.

See above for further details...

Artful prankster creates Google Maps traffic jams by walking a cartful of old phones around Berlin

Re: Iowa Caucuses Cauc-Up App

"US democracy" - never mind have they turned it off and on again, have they actually turned it on yet?

Trains

Could be replicated if train users did the same, especially in the UK where trains are often slow or broken down - more than 99 phones on board!

Co-Op Insurance and IBM play blame game over collapse of £175m megaproject

No Outsource Clause

Maybe COOP should have specified a "no outsource clause" or at least made it a condition that any outsource of services would be declared upfront and agreed between the various parties.

Windows 7 back in black as holdouts report wallpaper-stripping shenanigans

The only way I know if Windows10 has updated is if it has turned itself off or rebooted overnight with fresh wallpaper ready for the morning!

The Curse of macOS Catalina strikes again as AccountEdge stays 32-bit

Catalina Broke my Scanner

Yep, upgraded to Catalina and it broke my fairly new Canon scanner. Ended up buying some dedicated scanner software and the upside is that it's much better than the free Canon software.

It's always DNS, especially when you're on holiday with nothing but a phone on GPRS

Carphone

I remember one family holiday in the Lake District (dad had an F-Reg Peugeot 405 to date this) we spent ages driving round so that he could get a mobile signal strong enough for a reasonably clear voice signal to provide support back to engineering HQ. In those days it was an analogue carphone with the base wired into the dash and the handset (green LED backlit buttons) on a curly cord. He had the 1.9 (same engine as the Peugeot 205 GTi) which I was quite keen to get my hands on of course, but the company car insurance brought in new T&C's on the policy just weeks before I passed my driving test!

Not just adhesive, but alcohol-resistant adhesive: Well done, Apple. Airpods Pro repairability is a zero

Seems unlikely that anyone would attempt to repair this kind of product anyway.

Don't look too closely at what is seeping out of the big Dutch pipe

Re: Climax

I did the same, easily done!

TalkTalk bollocked after fibre marketing emails found to be full of sh!t

People are STILL using TalkTalk?!

HP printer small print says kit phones home data on whatever you print – and then some

Re: polluting the well.

In such circumstances I normally use the retailer's Head Office address & contact details so they can SPAM themselves :)

Two years ago, 123-Reg and NamesCo decided to register millions of .uk domains for customers without asking them. They just got the renewal reminders...

123-Reg - 123 Reasons to Leave

They automatically added my domain order and I had to contact them to remove it, despite their latest comment.

Like TalkTalk, not sure why anyone still uses them :(

Vulture Central team welcomed to our new nest by crashed Ubuntu that's 3 years out of date

Unwanted

There's a few of these BT InLinkUK kiosk things here in Leeds. Can't recall ever seeing anyone using them.

Quick question, what the Hull? City khazi is a top UK tourist destination

Re: Pedant's corner

Wouldn't it be great if the "what3words" app used ///cave.cave.cave for Wookey Hole :)

All roads in US cable biz GTT's Brit network seem to lead to Menwith Hill

Re: I Remember the Early Days of Menwith Hill

The Hunters Stones BT tower is still there but not sure if it as many / any microwave dishes attached these days.

Re: As I only live a few miles from The Hill...

I live only a few miles away also, Menwith Hill just applied for planning permission for a couple of new radomes (golf balls). Can't imagine that planning will be refused!

Blackburn ain't big enough for the both of us: Mr Creamy and Mr Whippy at the centre of new ice-cream war

One of them making too much lolly...

Bonkers British MPs rant: 5G signals cause cancer

Here we go again!

Haven't we been here before with 1G, 2G, 3G, 4G...

Maybe if there is a case that radio signals affect the brain it's only affecting the rational thought processes of our elected representatives!

Metro Bank enjoys an early Friday tipple and topples over

Funding

At least they haven't gone bust, there were some concerns before new investment was just announced.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/metrobank-bonds/metro-bank-funding-problems-deepen-as-bondholder-confidence-wavers-idUKL5N22L429

Re: No problem, though.

Maybe they need a mainframe :)

Oh 4G, I'm speechless: EE network outage smacks rare breed of customer that talks into their mobile phone

Huawei

Did the Chinese Government turn the network off?

I wonder how much EE paid a fancy London marketing agency to come up with "Everything Everywhere" before realising what they'd done?

Talk about a ticket to ride... London rail passengers hear pr0n grunts over PA system

Nice headline :)

Here's what Lynch, Hussain and HPE are saying about Autonomy pre-buyout due diligence

Reckon I'll start a business and flog it to HP for a few £Billion - how hard can it be if they only spend a few minutes on due diligence?!

BT Tower broadcasts error message to the nation as Windows displays admin's shame

BSOD

Windoze :(

Hams try to re-carve the amateur radio spectrum in fight over open or encoded transmissions

Licence Conditions

In the UK, amateur radio operators licenced by Ofcom are forbidden from encrypting transmissions.

The spirit of Amateur (Ham) Radio is very much that it's open.

Apple redesigns wireless AirPower charger to be world's smallest, thinnest, lightest, cheapest, invisible... OK, it doesn't exist anymore

Re: Kudos to Apple…

Would rather that Apple admit that they couldn't meet their product ambition than launch it anyway. Some companies would feel the need to just ship the product regardless.

IT meltdown bank TSB: It's as good a week as any to announce we're taking back control

Negotiation

Let's hope that the Sabadell negotiators aren't Barnier/Tusk with Theresa May on the TSB side for this exit...

HP deployed 'Truth Squad' in post-Autonomy PR blitz to defend Meg Whitman

The HP Way

Not exactly exhibiting "The HP Way". RIP

Packet switching pickle prompts potential pecuniary problems

Re: Back in my NetWare days

My boss had the same issue with a Patapsco ISDN backup installation - it wasn't set up properly and wasn't monitored. The first time we knew of an issue was when a £20K bill arrived in a box - fanfold printed.

Dear Britain's mast-fearing Nimbys: Do you want your phone to work or not?

Re: Maybe a solution

It would at least provide a local power source, and those turbines tend to be in remote areas which are likely to have poor coverage.

Femtocell

Your mobile operator may be able to give you a femtocell, possibly for free which would provide good indoor coverage using a bit of your broadband internet data.

For independent signal strength monitoring see rootmetrics.com or opensignal.com, you can even contribute measurements yourself :)

Sure, we've got a problem but we don't really want to spend any money on the tech guy you're sending to fix it

Not Penny Pinching, but Opportunity Pinching

In 1999 as a very junior network guy I flew to Dublin with two much more senior management colleagues as part of a project meeting to a prominent client which was an Irish bank. I was a bit nervous for various reasons, but the anticipated upsides were free flights, a decent 4* hotel and a night out in Dublin which sounded great.

It transpired that we were staying in the suburb of Ballsbridge and my more senior colleagues only really wanted to stray as far as the local Italian restaurant and go to bed early. All I saw of Dublin was a view from the taxi window.

Skype for Web arrives to bring the world together. As long as the world is on Chrome and... Edge?

Edge?

Who uses Edge?

UK's ICO event on targeted ads opens floor to the adtech industry: Anybody? No? Speak for 10 minutes. Hello?

Re: No surprise!

Yep, until they have a data breach and go bust!

TalkTalk kept my email account active for 8 years after I left – now it's spamming my mates

BREAKING NEWS: Talk Talk Are Rubbish

TalkTalk are rubbish, that's all.

Go, go, Gadgets Boy! 'Influencer' testing 5G for Vodafone finds it to be slower than 4G

6G!

Today Donald Trump says / Tweeted he wants 5G or even 6G! Probably not from a Chinese vendor I suspect.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall: Peak smartphone hits Apple, Samsung the worst

Innovation

Given there are only incremental benefits of upgrading thee days it's no wonder that device sales are declining.

Not so many people queuing outside fruity phone stores for the latest phone these days.

Northern UK smart meter rollout is too slow, snarls MPs' committee

Abort Abort Abort!

Massive cost, poorly implemented, little benefit! Maybe it's too late...

U wot, m8? OMG SMS is back from dead

PPI

Reckon once PPI claims can no longer be made later this year, SMS volumes will decline again :)

Plusnet vows to shove a sword in members area 'White Screen Of Death'

Re: Hateful website

Did they outsource it to TalkTalk?